


The Holy Or The Broken

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: tumblr prompt basket [27]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Castiel & Sam Winchester Friendship, Castiel Cares About Sam Winchester, Dean Gets Called Out On His Shit, Dean Winchester Bears the Mark of Cain, Gabriel Is Not Impressed, Hurt Gabriel (Supernatural), M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Protective Castiel, Protective Gabriel, Protective Sam Winchester, SOUL Mechanics, Sam Has A Powerful Soul, Sam Has Self-Worth Issues, Sam Winchester Has Powers, Sam Winchester Is Too Forgiving, Voicemail, mentions of Abaddon, mentions of lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 00:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13492653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: The first time Castiel brought Gabriel to Sam Winchester's bed, it was out of desperation. As the Archangel slowly recovered from his captivity at Metatron's hands, the reasons for his continued return to Sam became less practical and more personal with the runaway Archangel and the Boy With The Demon Blood learning to heal each other.





	The Holy Or The Broken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Otrera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Otrera/gifts).



> Written for the tumblr kiss prompt #61: "Hands On The Other Person’s Back, Fingertips Pressing Under Their Top, Drawing Gentle Circles Against That Small Strip Of Bare Skin That Make Them Break The Kiss With A Gasp"! This got really long and slow-burn and seriously angsty for a bit. Um.... oops?

**T** HE FIRST TIME Castiel brought Gabriel to Sam's bed, it was out of desperation. Metatron had resurrected the Archangel, but kept him captive and hobbled, and it had taken an extremely risky plan involving Cas cutting out his borrowed Grace long enough to rescue Gabriel and then Hannah hauling both of them back to Lebanon and the Bunker. Castiel had used a very credible imitation of Sam's puppy eyes on Dean to let him get the drained and unconscious Archangel inside the Bunker's wards, but with Sam he used logic. Human souls are powerful, and neither he nor Gabriel possessed a soul inside their vessels, and the proximity to Sam during those long weeks of convalescence had done wonders for Castiel's recovery, asking Dean to do it was hardly a good idea with the Mark still on his arm, Sam didn't need to do anything and Castiel promised he would stay right there and keep an eye on things to make sure Gabriel didn't do anything if he woke....

The "if" was the deciding factor, ultimately, and Sam fell asleep on one side of the bed with Gabriel passed out on the other and Castiel perched on the foot of the bed watching them both. For the next four days, Sam would go about his day as per usual, though he found himself spending more time in his room with his research than the library, and at night he would fall asleep next to Gabriel, trusting Castiel to keep watch for anything wrong. More and more, however, Sam could admit that the “anything wrong” was anything preventing Gabriel’s recovery. Sam might still have quite a few trust issues when it came to the being who had put him through his own personal Hell long before Lucifer ever got popped out of the box, but Dean not remembering and also knowing that he’d been trying to prevent the box from popping made it easier to forgive.

On the fifth day, Sam woke to find a pair of whiskey-gold eyes staring at him from about six inches away. He blinked. Gabriel was still awake and staring at him, and didn’t appear to have moved in the slightest. Somewhat at a loss, and not entirely awake himself, Sam asked, “Feeling any better?”

Gabriel disappeared without a word, the only sign he’d been there the slowly settling sheets.

 **T** HE SECOND TIME was the same night. Castiel showed up at the Bunker door, once more mostly carrying the weakened Archangel. This time, however, Gabriel was awake and surly about it, meaning Dean was even less inclined to let him in until Sam came up behind him to see what was going on. Gabriel’s expression went blank so quickly that Dean actually blinked.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said as calmly as he could manage, as if it was perfectly expected for their seraph friend to show up on their doorstep with a recalcitrant Archangel. “Usual room is free. Need a hand?”

“I have him, thank you, Sam,” Castiel answered, hefting Gabriel a little higher so that the Archangel’s feet were left dangling above the ground as Castiel stepped around Dean and carried his older brother into the Bunker. “Now that he is awake, he should probably eat something sugary to help replenish his pagan energies.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Sam promised as they disappeared down the hall.

“Really, Sam? You that eager to play Florence Nightingale for the pixie?” Dean griped, earning him a classic “don’t be a dick” bitchface from Sam in response. “Whatever, just don’t be stealing my pie to feed him.”

Sam flipped him off and grabbed his coat to go into town. It was his turn to make a grocery run anyway, and while Dean might not appreciate cake, he had a feeling that Gabriel would be more receptive.

He was back an hour later with his preferred selection of fresh fruit and vegetables along with a large packet of ground beef and, to help placate his brother, the last plate of pecan pie from the bakery near the grocery store. Putting the perishables away in the refrigerator and leaving the pie on the kitchen table, Sam carried the last bag containing the plastic cake box down the hall towards his room. He could hear the harsh, gutteral Enochian with ringing overtones even through the closed door, and had to swallow back a flare of panic before he could knock. The voices - and he tried not to think about how he could distinguish the differences between Castiel’s Voice and Gabriel’s - fell blessedly silent, and he took that as the signal to open the door, tossing the bag gently onto the bed by Gabriel’s knee as he crossed to his dresser.

There was a pause, then the rustling crinkle of a plastic bag being moved, either pulled closer or opened, and then Gabriel’s almost incredulous drawl of, “Angel food cake? Seriously?”

“They were out of Death By Chocolate,” Sam said evenly in a credible imitation of Castiel’s deadpan tone.

There was a moment of silence, and then Gabriel said, somewhere between weary and amused, “Touche, kiddo.” It was the first thing the Archangel had said to him since before his death, and Sam tried not to think too closely about why his gut clenched. He found his pajamas and turned to head back out of the room when Gabriel called out, “Sam... thanks.”

Sam felt the heat creeping up his neck into his face and forced himself to keep breathing. He’d never heard Gabriel say that before, certainly not to him. He glanced back in uncertainty, only to find Gabriel watching him with a quietly intent expression that was almost worse than the blankness from before. For one gut-twisting moment he wished he hadn’t let his hair grow out so long that he couldn’t hide behind his bangs any more-- Gabriel wasn’t thanking him for the cake, and Sam couldn’t wrap his head around what else it might be, because it wasn’t like he’d really done anything.

Haltingly, he mumbled something that he hoped would pass for some sort of acknowledgement and fled to the bathroom down the hall. He stayed there for several minutes just relearning how to breathe, and then several more minutes once he was in the shower just letting the Bunker’s water pressure beat the tension out of his back and shoulders until he thought he could go back to his room without ending up a stammering mess.

He hadn’t needed to worry. When he returned to his room, dressed in pajamas and carrying his other clothes, both Gabriel and Castiel were thoroughly engrossed in watching... Sam glanced at the screen, since the volume was turned down to angel levels, and blinked. Were they really watching  _Downton Abbey_? He glanced at the angels in question and noticed the slight twitches and flickers in their expressions indicating a more telepathic conversation going on, and decided he was probably better off not knowing. Dropping his clothes into the hamper in his closet, he hesitated only a moment before sliding into bed next to Gabriel and turning over to sleep with a mumbled, “G’night, Cas, Gabe.”

“Good night, Sam,” Castiel answered, just above Gabriel’s own quiet murmur of, “Night, kiddo.”

Once again, Gabriel was gone in the morning.

 **T** HE THIRD TIME, Castiel showed up with Gabriel’s arm draped over his shoulders and the Archangel clutching at his bloodsoaked side. Dean didn’t even bother with a token protest, just let them in the door and yelled for Sam to get the first aid kit. Sam met them in his room, an old towel already laid out over the bed to catch the blood, and set to work cleaning and stitching the deep gouges that looked suspiciously like claw marks while Castiel hovered near the bed in case he had to hold Gabriel down.

“What the hell even happened?” Dean asked, more aggressively than Sam really felt was warranted. From the glance Gabriel and Castiel exchanged before the Archangel had to close his eyes and breathe deeply for a few minutes, they agreed with him.

“Scratch Abaddon off the list,” Gabriel managed around his gritted teeth. “Had to take care of that while I’m still low-powered so as not to give away my survival to Metadouche. If we’re lucky, he’ll think Dean-o here took her out with the power boost from that nasty little murder mark on his arm and I’ll have enough time to recharge and plan a proper trap for him.”

“You took her on without telling us?” Dean asked, sounding somewhere between angry and hurt. He’d gotten the damn Mark in order to be able to wield the First Blade so he could take on Abaddon, after all. “You could have at least taken us along for back-up!”

“No offense meant,” Gabriel gritted out, “but you two chuckleheads are a bit out of your league when it comes to a Knight of Hell.  _Technically_  the Princes and Dukes are stronger, but the Knights are much more vicious fighters since that was pretty much their whole job description.”

“What about Lilith and Alistair?” Dean countered, ignoring the way Sam went still. “Sammy killed those two just fine.”

“While jacking up my powers with demon blood,” Sam ground out, not looking up at any of the three in the room. “And Lilith wasn’t exactly fighting back all that much. Thanks so much for bringing that up, Dean, really.”

“Sam...” Dean started, caught somewhere between frustration and apology.

Sam wasn’t done. “Of course, I haven’t actually used my powers at all since Famine, unless you count what happened in Stull or kicking Gadreel out of my head. I’m a little out of practice in killing demons with my mind, even without the need to lock me up in the dungeon for four days to detox after the fact.”

“Wait,  _what_?!” Gabriel interrupted, his sharp incredulity causing Sam to flinch. “You don’t detox from anything by locking someone up and leaving them, especially not demon blood! For Dad’s sake, you could have  _killed_  him!”

"At least he would have died human!" Dean said defensively. Sam hunched in on himself and refused to look up from his careful stitching, hearing again the echoes of Dean’s cold voice speaking those same words to Bobby all those years ago along with “monster” and “vampire” and “there’s no going back.”

"Cassie, tell me I'm not hearing this,” Gabriel was saying, his blood-coated hand clenching and flexing just within Sam’s line of sight. “Lie to me if you have to."

"I'm sorry, Gabriel,” Castiel answered, sounding genuinely regretful. “I'm a terrible liar."

"Ugh!” Gabriel made a brief, aborted move to lift his hand, apparently changing his mind when he caught sight of his blood covering it. When he spoke next, his tone was measured and even and practically arctic. “Look, you arrogant, self-Righteous Man, demon blood isn't like heroin addiction. The stuff attacks on a spiritual level, ripping into the soul of the person who got conned into drinking it and leaving it shredded as if Alistair had gotten a hold of it for a decade or five. Assuming the person in question has as bright and pure a soul as Sam-a-lam here, that shredded soul gets taken up to Heaven, only to be shunted over to a recovery wing where the Rit-Zien, under the command of  _Raphael_ , are supposed to be taking care of piecing together damaged souls so that they don't automatically reject their personal Heavens.” Somewhat sarcastically, he added, “What, exactly, do you think Raph would have done to your brother's soul up there?"

"Cas....?" Dean asked shakily. Sam could almost hear the pleading that his brother wouldn’t voice, begging Castiel to tell him that Gabriel was wrong. Castiel sighed and, after a long moment, answered with a kind of weary resignation.

“Raphael would not have been kind, by any stretch of the imagination,” the seraph admitted. "Zachariah's manipulations of your shared Heaven were bad enough when it was the both of you sent up with you, Dean, being protected as Michael's intended Vessel. Sam was afforded no such protections on his own, given the attitude many angels held towards him at the time, and so would likely have been subject to further tortures."

 _That explains a lot,_  Sam thought to himself, more resigned than anything over the confirmation that Heaven had consistently rejected him. The idea that his soul could ever be described as “pure” was laughable, of course, but shredded... that wasn’t the first time he’d heard that.

The silence became heavy, and then there was the rustling of Castiel’s coat as he moved. Sam went still when the seraph’s hand appeared in his line of sight near his arm, forcing his hands not to move so as not to pull or jerk at the unfinished stitches in Gabriel’s side. The hand hovered, as if giving him time to see and acknowledge it, and then dropped to rest lightly on Sam’s arm. Sam didn’t move, could barely even bring himself to breathe, and the hand shifted as Castiel stepped up close behind Sam and gently wrapped his arms around him.

“I wondered,” Castiel said from somewhere above Sam’s head, his soft voice aching with sorrow. “When you rejoined Dean, after your separation following the confrontation with War, there were stresses on your soul, which I attributed to Lucifer’s visiting your dreams. How many times?”

“Seven,” Sam admitted, barely above a whisper. The angel’s arms tightened around him and he swallowed. “I figured if Dean didn’t want me around and wasn’t going to follow through on his promise to kill me himself, the least I could do was make sure Lucifer couldn’t take his true Vessel. Lucifer claimed he brought me back every time, but I guess it could have just been the other angels kicking me out after expressing their displeasure over me not playing my role like a good little abomination.”

Castiel made a soft, wounded noise and laid his cheek against the top of Sam’s head as his hold on Sam got even tighter. Sam clenched his jaw against voicing his physical discomfort, reaching up with the hand not holding the needle to touch one of Castiel’s hands briefly in silent apology before he bent back to the task of stitching up Gabriel’s wounds. He had to pause again when the hand Gabriel had twisted in the sheet came up and gently covered his, looking up in uncertainty to see the Archangel watching him with a hooded, pained expression in his golden eyes.

"Of all the things I've done to you...” Gabriel started, then trailed off with a weary sigh. “I'm sorry, kiddo."

"It's not...” Sam stopped and swallowed back his automatic response, trying to collect his thoughts. “Look, Raphael pretty much just wanted to destroy humanity, especially towards the end. You just wanted it to be over so you didn't have to keep watching your brothers fight."

"Still," Gabriel murmured, not looking any happier. He looked like he might have said more, except Dean finally found his voice again, drawing everyone’s attention once more.

“Sammy?” he asked, voice shaking and small. “All this time... have you really been thinking I was going to kill you?"

"Not... exactly,” Sam winced. He really didn’t want to have this conversation, especially not right now with his hands covered in Gabriel’s blood, but he wasn’t going to lie to Dean. “I mean, much as I hate those damn books, reading them kind of helped put some things in perspective, gave me a little more information, so I know the voicemail I got from you before Ilchester wasn't the one you left--"

"Wait, what?” Dean interrupted, starting to frown. “You didn't get--" 

"I doubt I was supposed to,” Sam broke in, his tone matter of fact as he lowered his eyes back to his work, making neat, efficient work of the last set of stitches. “Heaven and Hell both wanted me off the rails and killing Lilith, so Zachariah changing the message to push me past my breaking point isn't that much of a surprise."

"...What did the message say?" Dean asked, low and almost dangerous, his tone very similar to the one he used to get whenever something was threatening Sam, before everything literally went to Hell.

"Does it matter?" Sam asked. He didn’t really see how it could.

" _Yes_  it matters if it made you think I'd want to  _kill_  you!" Dean spluttered, a note of fear edging along the blustering anger.

"Like you calling me a monster to my face, or saying that if you didn't know me you'd want to hunt me? That Dad said to save me or kill me? That I'm a freak? ‘If you walk out that door, don’t bother coming back’?” Sam shook his head and carefully tied off the thread and snipped the needle free, setting both needle and scissors aside as he said, “The voicemail didn't say anything I hadn't already heard from you before, it just lumped it all together at once. Neosporin."

Castiel untangled one arm from around Sam’s shoulders and plucked up the little tube of antibiotic ointment from where it rested on the bed just out of Sam’s reach. Sam took it, brushing his fingers along Castiel’s in silent thanks. He wasn’t even surprised by the slight tingle of Grace from Castiel that left his hands free of blood when he opened the tube and squeezed out a generous amount onto the palm of his hand. 

“You know I don’t actually need that,” Gabriel said. His voice sounded only a little bit dubious, like he was trying to hide his skepticism.

“The less your Grace has to do to maintain your Vessel, the faster you will recover,” Sam recited, his lips twitching slightly as he heard Castiel echoing the litany from the early days of his own convalescence. Even Dean snickered a little at their Greek chorus impression. It didn’t last long, and a moment later Dean was saying Sam’s name in a wounded, unhappy tone.

“Dean,” Castiel said, a note of warning in his usually implaccable tone. “While I was aware of the discrepancies between the message you left and the message Sam received, I believed, perhaps erroneously, that the two of you would discuss the message at some point. Perhaps my own efforts on behalf of Heaven contributed to your refusal to talk to Sam honestly, but you did not. You simmered and snapped, at Sam and at me, and if as Sam says the words he heard were not wholly unexpected he would not have wished to bring it up in case ‘reminding’ you of ‘your’ words made you decide to kill your brother after all.”

“Pretty much,” Sam admitted. He dipped his first two fingers into the ointment to test whether it had warmed enough from his body heat. “That and I read the books while I was soulless, so I wasn’t going to risk bringing it up when you were treating me more like a thing than a person.”

“That wasn’t you,” Dean started, but Sam shook his head.

“You keep saying that, but you’re still doing it,” he said, weariness creeping into his tone despite his best efforts. “You’re still treating me like a disappointment at best and a burdensome pet at worst, and whatever that Mark is doing to you really isn’t helping.” He sighed. “Look, can we... table this for a moment? I need to concentrate for a minute, here.”

“Since when do you need to concentrate to apply antibiotic ointment?” Dean muttered, voice sulky but subdued. Sam ignored him, turning his attention partially inward as he brought his ointment covered fingers down to the first of the stitched scratches. Light bloomed before his eyes, twisting and fluttering, and he bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from gasping or worse, screaming. His chest ached as he tugged internally, but one of the tattered filaments lifted up to slide down the length of his arm and out to the tips of his fingers as he began to spread the ointment, tracing Gabriel’s injuries slowly with the thin unravelled tendril of his soul. 

Castiel gasped and tightened his arms around Sam, but otherwise held himself rigidly still at Sam’s back. Beneath Sam’s hand, Gabriel’s stomach muscles trembled, but the Archangel didn’t make a sound that Sam could perceive with his ears. Dimly he thought he heard Dean demanding for Castiel to tell him what was wrong, what was going on, what was Sam doing....

Sam just managed to reach the end of the final wound with the last of the ointment before darkness closed in on him and he slumped across the bed and Gabriel’s legs, unconscious. 

 **T** HE FOURTH TIME was technically a continuation of the third, but it was still Sam and Gabriel sharing a bed due to Castiel’s actions so Sam was counting it. Rather than placing Gabriel in Sam’s bed as the Archangel was already there, however, Castiel had moved the unconscious hunter to lie beside Gabriel. Sam woke some time later to discover that he had rolled in his sleep to cuddle up close against Gabriel’s side with one hand tangled in his shirt. His attempt to disengage himself from Gabriel’s clothing drew said Archangel’s attention away from the flickering television screen.

For a long moment, hunter and Archangel stared at each other, each with their thoughts carefully hidden behind mental shields and controlled expressions. Unlike the usual silences between Sam and Dean, however, this time it was Sam who spoke first. “How’re you feeling?”

“I should be asking you that,” Gabriel said after several moments of just blinking at Sam in incredulity. “Do I even want to ask where the hell you learned how to do that incredibly dangerous trick of yours?”

“Probably not,” Sam mumbled, eyes darting down and away to study the newly fascinating weave of the blanket. “It helped a little, though... didn’t it?”

“It helped a lot, kiddo,” Gabriel admitted, making Sam smile. The smile fell again when the Archangel continued, “it also scared me and Cassie half to death, and almost finished the job when you passed out without cutting the connection first. Cassie had to take your brother off to go make food or something so he wouldn’t do anything stupid like try to wake you up.” 

“I’ll have to thank him for that, since Dean probably won’t,” Sam sighed, picking at a loosened thread in the blanket. It probably wouldn’t even occur to Dean how dangerous trying to wake him could be. Sam’s reflex grab for a weapon upon being awakened suddenly would only have been magnified by the connection Sam had been maintaining with his soul when he passed out. Just because he never consciously used his demon powers anymore didn’t mean they were gone....

“You do know your powers aren’t actually demonic, right?” Sam shot a half-hearted scowl in Gabriel’s direction, but the Archangel lifted both hands in placation. “Not eavesdropping, promise,” he assured Sam. “Just, you kinda crashed your usual walls with that stunt earlier and you’re projecting a bit.”

“Sorry,” Sam muttered, glancing down again as he tries to pull himself together a bit more. He jumped when one of Gabriel’s hands covered his on the blanket, swallowing tightly as he glanced up through the fall of his hair.

“Take it easy for a bit, huh?” Gabriel murmured, his face doing something weird that might have been an expression of concern. “You overshot the mark trying to fix up Abaddon’s little papercuts and brought me back to nearly half-strength in one go. You can take a little time for yourself to rest and relax.” Golden eyebrows quirked upwards as Gabriel added, “You do at least remember how to do that, right?”

“Might be a little rusty,” Sam found himself admitting with a rueful little half-hearted chuckle. It faded quickly into a despondent sigh. They hardly ever seemed to get any breathing room lately, just one thing after another after another clusterfuck. He wasn’t about to say so and risk annoying the Archangel with his whining. 

“Given everything Cassie told me about that’s happened and a few other things I kinda extrapolated from the gaps, I think you’ve more than earned the right to whine a bit, kiddo,” Gabriel told him in frank tones, squeezing his hands gently before letting go and slumping back down onto the bed. “Also, still not eavesdropping. Your powers - which, as I said, are not actually demonic in origin - make you a little louder than most humans when you don’t have your shields up. You’ve got some pretty impressive ones, too, by the way.”

“Thanks?” Sam stammered, even less sure of what to do with Gabriel’s compliments than he was with Gabriel’s apology or expressions of gratitude. From the tinge of sadness that entered Gabriel’s expressive golden eyes, the Archangel probably knew it, too.

“We’ll work on it,” came the only somewhat disconcerting promise. “For now, you should probably eat some of whatever that is the Dean-Bean just finished cooking for you. Smells like burgers,” he added when Sam eyed the door as if unsure he really wanted it to open. “Cassie promised to bring food to us so we don’t have to go anywhere.”

Well, okay, it’s not like Dean’s burgers weren’t all kinds of amazing since they’d moved into the Bunker and his brother had started “nesting” as he called it, and if Sam was completely honest the idea of getting out of bed was less than appealing just at that moment. Mindful of his apparently lowered mental shields, Sam refrained from allowing himself to think at all about why that was the case, even if it still felt odd to just lie in bed next to an Archangel and wait to be waited on by his best friend who also happened to be an angel. His life was surreal.

Castiel’s arrival moments later with a large platter of burgers saved Sam from having to find a way to answer out loud. The platter was set down between Sam and Gabriel’s knees, and Castiel took up his accustomed position at the foot of the bed facing them. Sam even managed to eat two full burgers and half of a third before his stomach protested the idea of trying for more, at which point Gabriel leaned over and took a bite out of the remaining half while it was still in Sam’s hand. Sam rolled his eyes and handed the rest of his burger over before allowing himself to slump back down into his bed’s embrace. It was probably just Gabriel’s suggestion that he was allowed to relax, but a nap was sounding really good to Sam right about then.

And if Castiel thought anything about Sam rolling into Gabriel’s side to cuddle before he was technically fully asleep, well, the seraph mercifully said nothing. 

 **W** HEN GABRIEL APPEARED in Sam’s bed the fifth time, three days after the death of Abaddon, Castiel was conspicuously absent. In fact, from the way Gabriel was glaring at a rumpled spot of blanket near the foot of the bed, Sam suspected that Castiel had deliberately popped out (or gone invisible with intent to sneak out, given the Bunker’s wards) only moments before he’d entered his room. Why, however, was still a mystery, so Sam went ahead and stepped into the room, leaving the door open behind him. “Everything okay?”

“Peachy,” Gabriel muttered on the end of an irritated sigh. His eyes tracked something that Sam couldn’t see with his normal vision, and Sam deliberately didn’t Reach to look for, until “whatever it was” reached the door. Sam gave it to the mental count of five before he gently nudged the door closed with his foot. There was a soft thump and a muffled curse right before the door clicked shut. Sam barely managed to meet Gabriel’s eyes before the both of them were snickering like naughty school children who had just gotten away with a prank.

The shared amusement couldn’t quite disguise the lines of stress around Gabriel’s eyes and mouth, however, and Sam found his feet carrying him to the edge of the bed opposite where Gabriel was half-reclined. He sat sideways on the bed, facing wall and Archangel, and steeled his nerves. “So. I’m guessing from that little display of his typical subtlety, Cas thinks we need to talk?”

“I’d ask how you guessed, but I bet Dean made some comment to you to that effect?” When Sam nodded, Gabriel sighed again more deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose in a very human gesture of an impending headache. “Our brothers are conniving together.”

“Beats Dean sniping and Cas giving him the cold shoulder,” Sam shrugged. His fingers twitched to start picking at the blanket and he made himself fold his hands in his lap instead. “I’m guessing that talk you had with him a couple of days ago is why Dean’s being so conscientious of his anger management and personal safety now?”

“It may be a factor,” Gabriel admitted, offering his own shrug. “The last thing any of us needs is him biting it while that Mark has a hold on him. ‘Dean Winchester, Knight of Hell’ isn’t really a title he wants to aspire to any more than ‘brother-killer’, which, by the way, I didn’t mention that last one. Cain told him that, something about living Cain’s life in reverse.”

“I guess he would know,” Sam muttered. Suddenly Dean’s reaction to finding out about the voicemail and Sam’s subsequent expectation of death at his brother’s hand made a lot more sense if he was already afraid of exactly that. “So. Talk?”

“Talk,” Gabriel confirmed. He tilted his head to give Sam a slantwise look. “What’s the bet that our darling interfering brothers also gave us completely different topics to talk  _about_?”

“My bet’s on half-and-half,” Sam said after a moment of consideration. If Castiel was trying to be sneaky and subtle, then he’d been talking to Dean about this a little too much, which probably meant... “We were each given two conversation topics, one that matches up and one that differs.”

“Usual stakes?” Gabriel asked, a mischievous gleam entering his eyes.

Sam, who had read up on Norse mythology after the showdown at the Elysian Fields hotel and the deaths of so many pagan gods (including Gabriel) at Lucifer’s hands, made a face and shook his head. “No thanks. I’m sure she’s nice enough, but I’m not interested in marrying Freya.”

Gabriel let out a bark of laughter. “Fair enough! Eh, I’ll think of something...” With almost studious casualness, he added, “Cassie wanted me to talk to you about the plan to take down Metatron and get your opinion on Gadreel. And he may also have mentioned that he thinks I should tell you all about how I’ve been in love with you for years.”

Sam blinked. He couldn’t have heard that right... except there was a faint dusting of pink across Gabriel’s cheekbones like some artist’s rendering of a delicate blush, and it could have been a trick... but it could have also been Gabriel deliberately mimicking human body responses to give Sam the clues he was more used to gathering. He swallowed, forcing himself to keep his tone as light and casual as the Archangel’s had been. “Huh. Dean told me to talk to you about my reckless, passively suicidal tendencies - which, sure, I will when he does, the hypocrite - and about the giant crush he’s only just now noticing I have on you even though it’s been there since we met in that university in Ohio.” He hesitated as Gabriel blinked at him in apparent shock, then blurted out in a burst of awkward curiosity, “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Thought you hated me,” Gabriel answered, after a long moment of soundless jaw movement that failed to produce words. “I certainly gave you enough cause to, or thought I did.... Why didn’t you?”

“Hate you or say anything?” It was a necessary clarification to make, but Gabriel only shrugged. No help there. Sam sighed and tried to put his thoughts into some semblance of order. “Look, I.... even before I knew about the demon blood in me, I’ve always felt...  _wrong_  inside. And there you were, cute and funny and  _flirting_  with me.... It was almost a relief when you turned out to be what we were hunting, except then you threw the fight. Don’t give me that look, you totally did. Two clumsy chainsaw killers and a couple of porn stars, after you made that kid think he was abducted by aliens?

“And then when Dean stabbed you, or I guess an illusion of you, the fighter props disappeared but the bed and disco ball didn’t, and I don’t know if Bobby noticed but I know Dean didn’t.” Sam paused, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. “I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t just tell Dean we hadn’t killed you, and not just because of the allegations against that professor that turned up after he was dead and couldn’t threaten his victims into silence anymore. By the time it hit me, we were on a werewolf case and I was so distracted I ended up... um, personally finding the second werewolf.”

“Gotta admit I’m curious what your reason was, if you really knew I wasn’t dead,” Gabriel said, only the slightest shifting to give away his discomfort at hearing Sam’s near-confession to sleeping with Madison because of it.

“You reminded me of Jess,” Sam said, low voiced and strained. “Your upbeat nature, your humor, your smile... even your work as a trickster, I mean, there’s a few seriously humbled jocks from Stanford with a healthy respect for Jess’s temper and her vengeance streak. Making that connection, realizing why I kept quiet and had to keep staying quiet... it almost felt like driving away from our apartment all over again. Confronting you the second time in Broward County? That was like watching her die, pinned to the ceiling and burning to death because Hell’s plans for me didn’t include happiness.”

One of Gabriel’s hands came into view. Sam watched as it hovered, just like Castiel had done three nights ago, and then dropped to rest on top of one of Sam’s own hands. Sam couldn’t help the soft huff of barely there laughter at Gabriel mimicking Castiel’s care to only touch Sam with his awareness and permission, and turned his hand over to lace their fingers together.. Permission granted.

He was immediately tugged forward to rest against Gabriel’s chest, the Archangel’s free arm coming up to wrap around Sam’s shoulders and pull him close. Sam sucked in a breath, nearly overwhelmed by the way Gabriel’s Grace seemed to surround him all at once, a tidal wave of light and warmth a hundred times stronger than he had ever felt from Castiel. It took him several precious seconds to remember to keep breathing, and then he was being surrounded all over again with the scent of Gabriel, the scent of ozone and vanilla and cinnamon that clung to his sheets and pillows when the Archangel disappeared.

“I didn’t know what to expect from you that first time we met,” Gabriel was saying, his chest vibrating pleasantly real and alive where it pressed against Sam. “I knew who the Vessels were supposed to be, obviously, and there would have been some parallels inasmuch as possible given the species difference. I almost didn’t put out the signal to catch your notice, but I had to see... I had to know. And then...” Gabriel swallowed and laughed a little, a weak and fluttering sound. “Then I met you, and you were everything Lucifer used to be before he was corrupted and more! Brighter, fiercer, more vibrantly angry but not ruled by that anger.

“I knew going in to that time loop that I’d end up hurting you, but I didn’t realize how bad. I made the mistake of thinking of you and Dean as Lucifer and Michael in human form. Lucifer would have given up after a hundred. You never did.” There was more than a hint of apology in Gabriel’s tone that made Sam’s chest ache. “And then those six months after, watching you fall into the darkness that anyone else with destiny’s deck stacked against them the way it was for you would have already been at and knowing that it was my fault, that I was the one responsible for drowning your light-- mmf!”

Sam’s hands refused to budge from where they were clutching Gabriel’s jacket, so he stopped the flood of words from the Archangel’s lips with his own. Gabriel’s startled yelp gave way to a low moan as he opened to Sam readily, and the hunter wasted no time in deepening the kiss. Vanilla and cinnamon and sugar hit his tongue with the first swipe into Gabriel’s mouth, and he might have said something about how it just figured that Gabriel would taste like Snickerdoodles if Sam hadn’t been entirely too busy with kissing him to comment. One of his hands found its way beneath the back of Gabriel’s jacket to drag his fingernails across the dip in his spine just above the waistband of his jeans and Gabriel broke the kiss with a gasp, drawing back just enough to stare wide-eyed up into Sam’s face, chest heaving for breath he didn’t need.

“Is there anything else we really need to talk about right this second?” Sam asked, just as breathless, fingertips stroking over that spot which had garned him such a strong reaction. Because he really wanted to defer any other talking until later.

 _Later,_  he could explain about all the ways he had come to love and admire Gabriel for himself, as more than just a reminder of Jess, even before he had ever known the “trickster” who was probably also a pagan god was originally an angel.

 _Later,_  they could talk through Sam’s self-loathing and feelings of loss and betrayal and anguish that kept him from sleeping most nights his bed went unoccupied by Gabriel beside him.

 _Later,_  they could find Dean and Castiel and talk about the plan to take down Metatron and literally  _anything_  else, but right now? Right now, through Castiel’s connivance, Sam had Gabriel all to himself, his feelings laid bare and somehow, bewilderingly, miraculously returned, and Sam didn’t want to spend that time talking.

“Nah, we’re good,” Gabriel agreed, a little dazed and a little amused and a  _lot_  eager if the way he was pulling Sam back in was anything to go by. Not that Sam was resisting at all. Or complaining.

They still got a little noisy.

 **A** FTER THE SIXTH time, Sam stopped keeping count.

**-End-**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [For Peace And Trust Can Win](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13545567) by [LadyShadowphyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre)
  * [borderline](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13559967) by [saintsurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/pseuds/saintsurvivor)




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